A Washington lobbying firm has answered Nigeria Aviation Minister Festus Keyamo after he called its push for old American records on President Bola Tinubu a small fuss that leads nowhere.
Von Batten Montague York posted on X that the world should ask why a cabinet minister is rushing to answer a small American firm.
The firm said the Nigerian presidency is acting like a narco state and using state power to shield Tinubu, whom it says the FBI alleges was part of a group that moved heroin from Nigeria into the United States in the 1980s and 1990s.
The firm said the title of its next briefing to the President Donald Trump administration and Congress will be Senior Nigerian Government Officials Rushing to Protect Their Alleged Drug Trafficker President. It said this helps explain why the United States treats the Nigerian government as among the most corrupt in the world. It said its work is to build a case before the White House and Congress, raise public notice in America, and keep lawmakers focused.
The firm said Tinubu and his ministers walked into a trap. It asked why South American drug traffickers are flocking to Nigeria and said the aviation minister might help answer that.
Keyamo is Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development. His short reply came after the firm named him with presidential aides Bayo Onanuga and Sunday Dare in what it called a planned campaign to disrupt its work. The firm said it sent an information referral dated 5 September 2026 to the FBI Washington Field Office on possible foreign government harassment and interference. It also made a extra filing in a District of Columbia Freedom of Information Act case, Greenspan versus the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, before Judge Beryl Howell.
That case seeks FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration files on decades old drug trafficking claims tied to Tinubu. A related 1993 civil forfeiture case in Illinois, United States versus Funds in Account Number 263226700, named Tinubu, Adegboyega Mueez Akande and Abiodun Agbele. Government papers from that era said investigators looked from 1988 to 1991 at a Nigeria based heroin group that sent white heroin to Chicago and that proceeds went into United States bank accounts owned or controlled by Tinubu. No criminal conviction of Tinubu is on the public record from that case.
The firm is registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act on a reported 1.2 million dollar yearly contract with former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, now of the African Democratic Congress. It has given more than 60 pages of Justice Department papers to Trump administration officials, members of Congress and senior staff. It has also released recent public FBI and DEA court filings and said a federal court found the Justice Department had already acknowledged a criminal investigation of Tinubu for drug trafficking and money laundering, not only a civil money case.
